…cuz we sure don’t want to repeat it. Check out this bit of late 20th-century thinking (via Copenhagenize):
Not only are bicycles dangerous, they are as antiquated a form of transportation as the rickshaw. In no advanced city on earth will you find civilized people cycling to work. The urban cyclist is generally a crank, either profoundly antisocial or hopelessly narcissistic and following the strenuous life in hopes of achieving immortality or a legendary sex life. When you encounter him give him a wide berth and never turn your back on him.
Wow. That’s classic car-culture thinking from 1980.
UPDATE: Hmmmmm… From today’s New York Times:
And everyone — everyone — is a hostage to gravity, adding to their burden by carrying distended bags of every description. The champion is a woman who cycles past wearing a golf bag like a quiver across her back.
Truly, we are the only species so discontented with our natural gaits, so ambitious to exceed a foot-pace. It all puts me in mind of Thomas Jefferson, on the subject of walking and horses and their deleterious effect on human exercise.
“I doubt,” he wrote, “whether we have not lost more than we have gained, by the use of this animal.”
Comments 4
Interestingly, I read something similar from the 1880′s:
“Make haste whilst pulling your cart past velocipedist. Such newfangled and treacherous devices are best left out of the city hustle and bustle. Close proximity to said scoundrels may result in the introduction of pederous particles to the vascular system! They subsit soley on the ill-concieved notion of long-life and the fascination of flirtatious women.”
Posted 19 Nov 2009 at 11:41 am ¶“following the strenuous life in hopes of achieving immortality or a legendary sex life.”
As if there is something wrong with wanting either of these things!
Posted 19 Nov 2009 at 12:50 pm ¶What rot.
Was the Times piece simply an attempt to deride cyclists whose riding skills are largely undeveloped? I was one of them a year and a half ago when I started biking regularly. To me, these less able riders are just indicative of the newest wave of the liberated. They’ll improve with time. For now, their presence suggests the movement continues to grow.
Perhaps the purpose of the article was to question the intrinsic value of a transportation activity when some of its participants do not execute it well. I’d happily apply that standard to the use of motorized vehicles.
As to the “deleterious effect[s] on human exercise”, driving is much more like riding a horse than is cycling (assuming, of course, (1) horse rides that don’t involve incessant whipping, and (2) bike rides that involve more than coasting downhill).
One other possibility, I guess, is that the author is an extreme proponent of New Urbanist principles and figures if you can’t walk there easily enough it is simply too far away.
Maybe I’ve got it all wrong. Perhaps this was simply a very clever ploy to bring more cyclists to Stanford. I wonder what sort of graduate programs they offer…
Posted 19 Nov 2009 at 8:29 pm ¶Reminds me of the idiot psychologist in the 50′s who wrote a book on the dangers of reading comic books.
Poppycock!
Posted 20 Nov 2009 at 6:15 am ¶